January 1, 2024 REVISION
Editor’s note: Charles Doane, cruising editor of Sail magazine (one of Soundings’ sister magazines), was one of four people rescued from an Alpha 42 catamaran off Virginia after the boat was disabled in a gale. Doane, the delivery skipper (?) and the yacht’s owners were en route to the BVI from New York. Here is Doane’s account. To follow this and other sailing stories, click here for Sail’s SAILfeed.
“I can say for certain that was the best helicopter ride of my life. It was also the best shower.” — statement by Gunther Rodatz to U.S. Coast Guard airbase personnel; Elizabeth City, North Carolina; Jan. 14.
THERE HAS ALREADY BEEN a lot of buzz about what happened Tuesday morning approximately 300 miles off the Virginia coast, when owners Gunther and Doris Rodatz, together with delivery skipper Hank Schmitt and myself, abandoned the 42-foot catamaran Be Good Too courtesy of a U.S. Coast Guard Jayhawk helicopter crew. As is usually the case, much of it has been speculative, and some people have complained that we need not have left the boat. True facts have been a little hard to come by. Here on my own blog, at least, I can do what I can to correct that.
We departed Liberty Landing Marina in Jersey City, bound for St. John, USVI, at about 1430 hours on Wednesday, January 8. It was bone cold outside, and the boat had been frozen into her berth by thin ice. The marina’s pump-out boat came around to act as an ice-breaker and helped bust us loose, and after a brief stop at the marina’s fuel dock, we headed down New York Harbor under power. We unrolled the solent jib after passing through the Verrazano Narrows, but Hank didn’t want anyone on deck handling the mainsail in the bitter cold. We motorsailed south all through the first night under the jib alone, staying inside the heated interior as much as possible, as the decks outside were soon coated in a skin of ice from the light freezing spray.
Frozen in Jersey City.
By the following morning after breakfast it was warm enough that the deck was clear of ice and Gunther and I raised the mainsail, taking care to stay clear of the big chunks of ice that came toppling out of the sail as it was hoisted. We shut down the engines briefly and tried proceeding under sail alone, but the wind was getting weaker and soon we started up one engine and started motorsailing again so as to keep our speed up.
We motorsailed all through the rest of Thursday, until very early Friday morning, when the wind increased enough to shut down the engine. By sunrise we were close-reaching at 6-plus knots in 17-20 knots of southeast breeze. Not long afterward, however, the wind decreased and shifted to due south, and we spent much of the day motorsailing again, tacking back and forth, to make progress southward. After sunset the wind started building and we were able to proceed to the southeast under sail alone.
This was our best sailing during the entire trip. During my evening watch I had the boat running at 8-9 knots with spikes over 10 in 22-26 knots of apparent wind. Shortly before handing over to Gunther at 2130 hours I took one reef in the main. It was also clear we had entered the Gulf Stream, as the water temperature had risen dramatically.
After midnight on Saturday, January 11, I noted from my berth that the boat’s motion had increased quite a bit. Coming on deck at 0400 hours to relieve Hank I found the wind was blowing over 30 knots. There were two reefs in the main, and the jib had been roller-reefed to about half size. Waves were now occasionally falling on the center and starboard-side forward windows and some minor leaks had appeared around the edges of the window frames.
Heavy weather as viewed from inside.
Very shortly after Gunther came up to relieve me at 0700 hours an autopilot alarm sounded indicating power was low. Gunther started up the generator, but found it was not charging the batteries. We started up the starboard-side engine, but it also was not charging the batteries. In the middle of all this, the single-line sheet to the self-tacking jib suddenly parted. We knew the sheet lead for this sail was not ideal and probably should have already rolled it up by now, given the conditions. I now immediately furled the sail, while Gunther did something, I’m not sure what, that got the batteries receiving a charge from the engine. I woke up Hank at this point and informed him we were starting to have “adventures.”
We now set up the boat to motorsail itself in a fore-reaching configuration under just the double-reefed main (there was no third reef). We locked the helm off hard to port to keep her from rounding up and were making progress eastwards at 4-5 knots. This seemed stable, though we were still getting whacked occasionally by waves on the starboard bow.
At about 1130 hours we took a huge direct hit all across our front windows. The wave that hit us seemed much larger than the rest and was running at a different angle, such that it hit us from directly ahead instead of on the starboard quarter. Hank and I were in the saloon right behind the windows at the time. A fair amount of water squirted in all around the edges of the window panes and one large piece of trim was blown right off one vertical frame. The windows themselves, thankfully, held up fine. The wave stopped us dead in our tracks and even seemed to back us up a bit. A large amount of water surged up our stern and blew a large teak step right off its mounts.
The missing teak step.
Immediately after the hit we found we had trouble controlling the boat. It seemed at the time that our loss of forward momentum had made it hard to steer, and the boat started spinning in circles, tacking and then jibing. We started up the other engine, and even with both engines running hard we could not regain control. After our second uncontrolled jibe, Hank ordered that we should drop the mainsail and lie a-hull to the waves. The wind by now was blowing over 40 knots from the south and seas were running about 18-20 feet.
Frankly, this was the one point in our whole adventure where I was most nervous. I have sailed in 40 knots or more several times, but I had never before just laid to the wind and let a boat drift broadside to waves in conditions like this. I had always believed this was a bad idea and that it is best to adopt more active tactics. But the boat was very happy. The beam of the Alpha 42 (we were aboard hull no. 1, which had just been delivered to Gunther and Doris) is very wide for a cruising cat of this size, with an unusually high bridge deck, and we had remarked earlier that the hull was very stiff and its motion was remarkably comfortable. We now were amazed at how stable it seemed lying to these large seas. The rolling was not very pronounced and only rarely did waves slap the boat or land on deck.
That afternoon we contacted our weather-router, Ken McKinley, by sat-phone and he advised that we were now south of the Gulf Stream and that we could expect the wind to increase to 45 knots before switching to the west. We continued lying to the waves through the rest of the afternoon and all of the night, during which the wind did indeed increase into the mid-40s, with gusts to over 50. Gunther later insisted he saw one hit 60.The boat, however, was still quite comfortable, and we bided our time standing watches, reading, and sleeping.
Chilling during the gale. Yes, we were very comfortable!
On relieving Hank at 0430 hours early Sunday morning, he informed me we now had no electrical power. He had started the port-side engine shortly after midnight and found it was not charging the batteries. Meanwhile, the wind had also shifted west and was beginning to subside.
After sunrise we took stock of our situation. We first tried our engines: the port-side engine now would not start; the starboard engine would start, but wasn’t charging the batteries; the generator would not start. So we tried sailing, as the wind was now only blowing about 25 knots and seemed much more manageable. We rigged a new sheeting system for the jib, with one centerline sheet and barber-haulers on either side, and tried but failed to get the boat sailing off the wind to the southeast toward Bermuda, which now seemed like our best destination. The best we could do was effectively heave to, with the bow cocked toward the southwest as the boat drifted slowly southeast.
Our jury-rigged sheeting system. It worked very well.
We did discuss raising the mainsail, but decided against it, as we had discovered that the top two full battens had become detached from their batt-cars when we dropped the sail earlier. There seemed to be no easy way to repair them, so we decided to wait for less wind before raising the sail again.
By 1100 hours the wind, however, was increasing again, blowing over 30 knots I estimated, and curiously as it increased we found we had a little more luck getting the boat to sail. We first found we could sail on a close reach to the south-southwest at 4-5 knots. Later we managed to run off for a while on a broad reach to the southeast at higher speeds. Still, the boat was hard to control. It would periodically bear off or round up uncontrollably, do a spin, settle into a straight-line course for a while, do a spin, etc.
Through the afternoon the wind started diminishing again, and as it did the boat started spinning more and more. By early Monday morning, before daybreak, it was doing nothing but spinning in circles, so we rolled up the jib and decided to wait for daylight to see if we could figure out exactly what was wrong with the steering system.
Through all of this, too, we were now having to pump out the moist sections of the boat by hand. Water had been coming aboard continually in certain compartments for some time and now with no electric bilge pumps we had to attend to the chore ourselves. We weren’t sure where the water was coming from, and though the rate of ingress wasn’t at all alarming, it was annoying, as we had to pump for several minutes every one-and-a-half hours or so.
Come 0700 hours conditions had become quite calm, with the wind from the south now at less than 10 knots, and at last we were able to embark on a deliberate examination of our problem. Inspecting all the steering gear, we found the port-side rudder stock was no longer connected to its tiller arm. Instead of being secured with a pin all the way through the stock, there was only one small set screw, the tip of which had broken off. There was, however, a hole through the stock for a proper pin, and after a long bit of head scratching, jury-rigging, and tiller-arm wrestling, we finally managed to pull the tiller arm up off the retaining ring on to which it had collapsed, line up the tiller’s hole with the rudder stock’s hole, and drive in an Allen wrench with a hammer.
The starboard side rudder stock and tiller arm, with intact connection between the two.
Port-side rudder stock and tiller arm before repairs.
And after repairs.
We had to remove the angle sensor and the connecting rod between the two tillers to do our thing. Afterwards, of course, we reinstalled the rod. With the tiller arm swinging back and forth in the swell with some force, this all took some care and patience
As you can imagine, we felt pretty proud of ourselves at this point and were confident we had solved our most important problem. Unfortunately, after we started up our one engine to see if we could steer, the boat still would only drive in circles, to port, no matter what we did with the wheel.
So now it was time to visually inspect the rudders to see what the hell was really going on down there. Gunther insisted he should be the one to go into the water to do this and soon reported that the starboard rudder blade was just spinning in place around its stock and that the port rudder blade was bent inward toward the boat’s centerline at a very large angle.
Gunther goes for a swim.
In retrospect, it is hard to imagine how all this might have happened. I think it is likely that most cats would have suffered some sort of steering or rudder damage from the hit we took, but our damage seemed bizarre. Securing the tiller arms to the rudder stocks with small set screws may not be a good practice, but in this case those screws should have acted as sacrificial fuses. Confronted with the huge force of the wave stopping the boat and thrusting it backwards, you’d think the screws would break off, leaving the stocks to rotate freely so the rudder blades would be saved. Instead the starboard set screw held and the welds securing the frame armature inside the rudder to the stock had apparently failed. Meanwhile, the port set screw had failed, yet the frame somehow bent anyway.
Thinking we might still be able to steer the boat with its engines if we had both of them running, we next spent some time examining the port engine to see if we could get it started. This emitted a burning odor whenever we lit up the ignition, and we soon figured out that the starter had shorted out.
Unwilling to admit defeat, we thought we might have better luck sailing the boat now that we understood exactly what was wrong with the rudders. We were also now willing to raise the mainsail again in the much calmer conditions. So up went the main, and we tried every possible combination we could think of, playing the sails against each other and the bent rudder, playing the engine against the rudder in both forward and reverse, but no matter what we tried the essential dynamic remained the same: with no sails up the starboard engine ruled, and the boat just turned to port; with sails up and drawing, in whatever configuration, the bent rudder ruled and the boat would only turn to starboard.
We were now about 300 miles from anywhere, equidistant from Bermuda, the Chesapeake, and New York, and reluctantly concluded that we weren’t going to be able to get the boat to shore without outside assistance. We discussed the prospect of organizing a tow at some length and called Alpha Yachts by sat-phone to see if they could arrange something. Hank, an eternal optimist, thought this was a real possibility, but I was more skeptical. Thinking out how it might proceed, we realized that, even if we could get an appropriate vessel to come to us, it would take days before we could rendezvous. The tow would then have to proceed quite slowly, at say 3 knots at most, due to the bent rudder. Meanwhile, there would be a continuing barrage of routine winter gales, and during each of these–we figured one or two at least–the tow would have to be dropped and the boats would have to lie a-hull separately, waiting for the wind and seas to subside again before proceeding onward.
Finally, after listening to us bat this around for a while, Gunther reluctantly decided the only really viable option was to abandon the boat. He placed a sat-phone call to the Coast Guard in the late afternoon, and the evacuation wheels started grinding.
We assumed, of course, that we would be taken off by an AMVER vessel, as normally happens during evacuations far from shore. Hank had the audacity to suggest that we request a westbound vessel, so that we would arrive somewhere in the U.S. rather than in Europe, and the Coast Guard, to my surprise, readily assented to this, telling us that we could have a westbound ship pick us up at 0800 hours the following morning. They also gave us a weather forecast: the wind that night would increase to 25 knots, hold at that strength through daylight hours on Tuesday, then increase to 35 knots with gusts to over 40 during Tuesday night.
Having made our arrangements, we treated ourselves to a little pre-abandonment party shortly after sunset, broke our dry-ship rule, and opened up some fine red wine. The mood was subdued, but upbeat. Gunther and Doris, in spite of the bitter disappointment of having to give up this boat they’d been looking forward to taking possession of for two years, were very philosophical about their situation, were very grateful no lives were at stake, and together we all laughed about the problems we’d confronted during our passage.
Also, at one point in the evening, a ship came to us from the west and announced via VHF radio that they were ready to bring us aboard and take us to Israel. We politely declined, insisting we had a ride west in the morning, and they went on their way. Later it occurred to us that the Coast Guard, who had seemed more worried about Tuesday’s weather than we were, had sent this ship to us hoping to get us out of there sooner rather than later. We had arranged to maintain a sat-phone call schedule with them, but initially asked for a longer interval than they wanted–eight hours instead of four–to save our phone’s battery. It may be that if we had been in contact more regularly they might have insisted, or have strongly urged, that we join the ship bound for Israel.
In any event, during our scheduled call at 0200 hours they informed us they would be taking us off by helicopter at 0900 hrs. An MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter from North Carolina would rendezvous with a U.S. Navy warship en route to us to refuel, and then again on the way back. We would be allowed to bring with us one small bag each.
Promptly at 0900 hours the next morning we spotted a USCG C-130 search plane heading straight toward us at low altitude, followed five minutes later by the helicopter. I can’t speak to how Gunther and Doris were feeling at this point, but Hank and I were both looking forward to finding out how this would go. Hank has thrashed his way through an awful lot of trouble on the water–two dismastings and five different loss-of-steering incidents–but had always managed to get his boats home and had never before abandoned one. As for me, I had once before abandoned a boat, but in much more sanguine circumstances, in a river in Spain to a nearby dock.
You’ll have seen the video the Coasties have posted. If not, you can watch it here:
Video url: http://youtu.be/VzKULsNnv10
Hank asked me to be the guinea pig and go first, so Gunther and Doris could see what would be happening to them. This turned out to be fortunate for me, as I got to go up in the basket, all dignified and comfortable. After that first hoist, the helo crew decided to speed things up by bringing the others up in a sling, which to me looked decidedly inferior. Hank, as skipper, originally planned to go up last, but Gunther in the end insisted that he should go last instead. That cooler you see him carrying up in the video is not filled with beer, as some have suggested, but with personal possessions. I was very surprised the Coasties let him bring it along.
Doris comes aboard.
Be Good Too as viewed from the chopper.
Gunther, on left, with rescue swimmer John Knight.
Really the worst part of the experience was having to sit through the three-hour long helo ride to shore in soaking wet clothes. This was broken by the fuel stop aboard the U.S. Navy missile destroyer Ross, during which someone threw a garbage bag full of beef-and-onion hoagies into the back of the chopper for us to eat. They looked disgusting, but in fact were very tasty.
Navy personnel.
Authentic Navy chow.
On arrival at the airbase in Elizabeth City we were greeted by a swarm of people, including two Red Cross workers, who were eager to take care of us. From their perspective we must have seemed like disappointing survivors, as we were perfectly healthy, entirely untraumatized, and in generally good spirits. All we really wanted was a hot shower and some dry clothes.
Disembarking in Elizabeth City. Rescue swimmer John Knight, on left, hoist operator Brian Light, center, Gunther.
Gunther after his shower.
Like Gunther, I can honestly say it was the best shower of my life. He really is an amazing guy. Shortly after he finished his shower he got a call from someone at home in Bloomington, Indiana, telling him the water pipes in his house had frozen and burst. And both he and Doris were just as chilled out about that as they were about losing the boat.
SPECIAL THANKS: Words cannot express how grateful we are to our helicopter flight crew. At a minimum, we can recognize them individually:
Lt. David Birky, pilot
Lt. John Poley, pilot
AST2 John Knight, aviation survival technician 2nd class, rescue swimmer
AMT2 Brian Light, aviation maintenance technician 2nd class, hoist operator
Thanks, guys! You were great!
WHAT I LEARNED & QUESTIONED FROM THIS INCIDENT:
1. WINTER VOYAGE TO WEATHER AGAINST GULF STREAM CURRENT?
2. NEW NULL NO. 1 BUILT VESSEL; NO QUALIFIED BUILDING REPRESENTATIVE, YARDS EXPERIENCE, POOR MARINE SURVEY, INADEQUATE SEA TRIALS, NO SHAKEDOWNS AND NO VOYAGE PREPARATIONS - LEAVING THE DOCK WITH NO BATTERY CHARGING?
3. INSURANCE APPROVED VOYAGE? CREWING APPROVED?
4. CREW EXPERIENCE AND QUALIFICATIONS - TRACK RECORDS SHOULD OF RAISED A CAUTION FLAG?
5. ROUTING DISTANCE OFFSHORE WAS AN EXTREMELY POOR DECISION - LACK OF EXPERIENCE? IF WEATHER ROUTER MADE THIS SUGGESTION THE CAPTAIN SHOULD OF SAID "NO".
6. NO EMERGENCY TILLER (ALTERNATIVE STEERING) EQUIPMENT?
7. IF THE CREW CANNOT RECOUNT THE VOYAGE DETAILS ACCURATELY THEN YOU BEGIN TO SEE THE COMEDY OF ERRORS WHICH PLAGUED THIS VOYAGE...
DO YOU REALLY NEED MORE COMMENTS TO SEE THIS VOYAGE WAS AN EXTREMELY POOR DECISION WITH POOR PREPARATIONS.
See: http://northwestpassage2014.blogspot.com/2014/01/uscg-marine-safety-alert-01-14-offshore.html
- - - SNIP - - -
http://www.morganscloud.com/2014/01/18/two-yacht-losses-many-lessons-learned/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AttainableAdventureCruising+%28Attainable+Adventure+Cruising%29
“I can say for certain that was the best helicopter ride of my life. It was also the best shower.” — statement by Gunther Rodatz to U.S. Coast Guard airbase personnel; Elizabeth City, North Carolina; Jan. 14.
THERE HAS ALREADY BEEN a lot of buzz about what happened Tuesday morning approximately 300 miles off the Virginia coast, when owners Gunther and Doris Rodatz, together with delivery skipper Hank Schmitt and myself, abandoned the 42-foot catamaran Be Good Too courtesy of a U.S. Coast Guard Jayhawk helicopter crew. As is usually the case, much of it has been speculative, and some people have complained that we need not have left the boat. True facts have been a little hard to come by. Here on my own blog, at least, I can do what I can to correct that.
We departed Liberty Landing Marina in Jersey City, bound for St. John, USVI, at about 1430 hours on Wednesday, January 8. It was bone cold outside, and the boat had been frozen into her berth by thin ice. The marina’s pump-out boat came around to act as an ice-breaker and helped bust us loose, and after a brief stop at the marina’s fuel dock, we headed down New York Harbor under power. We unrolled the solent jib after passing through the Verrazano Narrows, but Hank didn’t want anyone on deck handling the mainsail in the bitter cold. We motorsailed south all through the first night under the jib alone, staying inside the heated interior as much as possible, as the decks outside were soon coated in a skin of ice from the light freezing spray.
Frozen in Jersey City.
By the following morning after breakfast it was warm enough that the deck was clear of ice and Gunther and I raised the mainsail, taking care to stay clear of the big chunks of ice that came toppling out of the sail as it was hoisted. We shut down the engines briefly and tried proceeding under sail alone, but the wind was getting weaker and soon we started up one engine and started motorsailing again so as to keep our speed up.
We motorsailed all through the rest of Thursday, until very early Friday morning, when the wind increased enough to shut down the engine. By sunrise we were close-reaching at 6-plus knots in 17-20 knots of southeast breeze. Not long afterward, however, the wind decreased and shifted to due south, and we spent much of the day motorsailing again, tacking back and forth, to make progress southward. After sunset the wind started building and we were able to proceed to the southeast under sail alone.
This was our best sailing during the entire trip. During my evening watch I had the boat running at 8-9 knots with spikes over 10 in 22-26 knots of apparent wind. Shortly before handing over to Gunther at 2130 hours I took one reef in the main. It was also clear we had entered the Gulf Stream, as the water temperature had risen dramatically.
After midnight on Saturday, January 11, I noted from my berth that the boat’s motion had increased quite a bit. Coming on deck at 0400 hours to relieve Hank I found the wind was blowing over 30 knots. There were two reefs in the main, and the jib had been roller-reefed to about half size. Waves were now occasionally falling on the center and starboard-side forward windows and some minor leaks had appeared around the edges of the window frames.
Heavy weather as viewed from inside.
Very shortly after Gunther came up to relieve me at 0700 hours an autopilot alarm sounded indicating power was low. Gunther started up the generator, but found it was not charging the batteries. We started up the starboard-side engine, but it also was not charging the batteries. In the middle of all this, the single-line sheet to the self-tacking jib suddenly parted. We knew the sheet lead for this sail was not ideal and probably should have already rolled it up by now, given the conditions. I now immediately furled the sail, while Gunther did something, I’m not sure what, that got the batteries receiving a charge from the engine. I woke up Hank at this point and informed him we were starting to have “adventures.”
We now set up the boat to motorsail itself in a fore-reaching configuration under just the double-reefed main (there was no third reef). We locked the helm off hard to port to keep her from rounding up and were making progress eastwards at 4-5 knots. This seemed stable, though we were still getting whacked occasionally by waves on the starboard bow.
At about 1130 hours we took a huge direct hit all across our front windows. The wave that hit us seemed much larger than the rest and was running at a different angle, such that it hit us from directly ahead instead of on the starboard quarter. Hank and I were in the saloon right behind the windows at the time. A fair amount of water squirted in all around the edges of the window panes and one large piece of trim was blown right off one vertical frame. The windows themselves, thankfully, held up fine. The wave stopped us dead in our tracks and even seemed to back us up a bit. A large amount of water surged up our stern and blew a large teak step right off its mounts.
The missing teak step.
Immediately after the hit we found we had trouble controlling the boat. It seemed at the time that our loss of forward momentum had made it hard to steer, and the boat started spinning in circles, tacking and then jibing. We started up the other engine, and even with both engines running hard we could not regain control. After our second uncontrolled jibe, Hank ordered that we should drop the mainsail and lie a-hull to the waves. The wind by now was blowing over 40 knots from the south and seas were running about 18-20 feet.
Frankly, this was the one point in our whole adventure where I was most nervous. I have sailed in 40 knots or more several times, but I had never before just laid to the wind and let a boat drift broadside to waves in conditions like this. I had always believed this was a bad idea and that it is best to adopt more active tactics. But the boat was very happy. The beam of the Alpha 42 (we were aboard hull no. 1, which had just been delivered to Gunther and Doris) is very wide for a cruising cat of this size, with an unusually high bridge deck, and we had remarked earlier that the hull was very stiff and its motion was remarkably comfortable. We now were amazed at how stable it seemed lying to these large seas. The rolling was not very pronounced and only rarely did waves slap the boat or land on deck.
That afternoon we contacted our weather-router, Ken McKinley, by sat-phone and he advised that we were now south of the Gulf Stream and that we could expect the wind to increase to 45 knots before switching to the west. We continued lying to the waves through the rest of the afternoon and all of the night, during which the wind did indeed increase into the mid-40s, with gusts to over 50. Gunther later insisted he saw one hit 60.The boat, however, was still quite comfortable, and we bided our time standing watches, reading, and sleeping.
Chilling during the gale. Yes, we were very comfortable!
On relieving Hank at 0430 hours early Sunday morning, he informed me we now had no electrical power. He had started the port-side engine shortly after midnight and found it was not charging the batteries. Meanwhile, the wind had also shifted west and was beginning to subside.
After sunrise we took stock of our situation. We first tried our engines: the port-side engine now would not start; the starboard engine would start, but wasn’t charging the batteries; the generator would not start. So we tried sailing, as the wind was now only blowing about 25 knots and seemed much more manageable. We rigged a new sheeting system for the jib, with one centerline sheet and barber-haulers on either side, and tried but failed to get the boat sailing off the wind to the southeast toward Bermuda, which now seemed like our best destination. The best we could do was effectively heave to, with the bow cocked toward the southwest as the boat drifted slowly southeast.
Our jury-rigged sheeting system. It worked very well.
We did discuss raising the mainsail, but decided against it, as we had discovered that the top two full battens had become detached from their batt-cars when we dropped the sail earlier. There seemed to be no easy way to repair them, so we decided to wait for less wind before raising the sail again.
By 1100 hours the wind, however, was increasing again, blowing over 30 knots I estimated, and curiously as it increased we found we had a little more luck getting the boat to sail. We first found we could sail on a close reach to the south-southwest at 4-5 knots. Later we managed to run off for a while on a broad reach to the southeast at higher speeds. Still, the boat was hard to control. It would periodically bear off or round up uncontrollably, do a spin, settle into a straight-line course for a while, do a spin, etc.
Through the afternoon the wind started diminishing again, and as it did the boat started spinning more and more. By early Monday morning, before daybreak, it was doing nothing but spinning in circles, so we rolled up the jib and decided to wait for daylight to see if we could figure out exactly what was wrong with the steering system.
Through all of this, too, we were now having to pump out the moist sections of the boat by hand. Water had been coming aboard continually in certain compartments for some time and now with no electric bilge pumps we had to attend to the chore ourselves. We weren’t sure where the water was coming from, and though the rate of ingress wasn’t at all alarming, it was annoying, as we had to pump for several minutes every one-and-a-half hours or so.
Come 0700 hours conditions had become quite calm, with the wind from the south now at less than 10 knots, and at last we were able to embark on a deliberate examination of our problem. Inspecting all the steering gear, we found the port-side rudder stock was no longer connected to its tiller arm. Instead of being secured with a pin all the way through the stock, there was only one small set screw, the tip of which had broken off. There was, however, a hole through the stock for a proper pin, and after a long bit of head scratching, jury-rigging, and tiller-arm wrestling, we finally managed to pull the tiller arm up off the retaining ring on to which it had collapsed, line up the tiller’s hole with the rudder stock’s hole, and drive in an Allen wrench with a hammer.
The starboard side rudder stock and tiller arm, with intact connection between the two.
Port-side rudder stock and tiller arm before repairs.
And after repairs.
We had to remove the angle sensor and the connecting rod between the two tillers to do our thing. Afterwards, of course, we reinstalled the rod. With the tiller arm swinging back and forth in the swell with some force, this all took some care and patience
As you can imagine, we felt pretty proud of ourselves at this point and were confident we had solved our most important problem. Unfortunately, after we started up our one engine to see if we could steer, the boat still would only drive in circles, to port, no matter what we did with the wheel.
So now it was time to visually inspect the rudders to see what the hell was really going on down there. Gunther insisted he should be the one to go into the water to do this and soon reported that the starboard rudder blade was just spinning in place around its stock and that the port rudder blade was bent inward toward the boat’s centerline at a very large angle.
Gunther goes for a swim.
In retrospect, it is hard to imagine how all this might have happened. I think it is likely that most cats would have suffered some sort of steering or rudder damage from the hit we took, but our damage seemed bizarre. Securing the tiller arms to the rudder stocks with small set screws may not be a good practice, but in this case those screws should have acted as sacrificial fuses. Confronted with the huge force of the wave stopping the boat and thrusting it backwards, you’d think the screws would break off, leaving the stocks to rotate freely so the rudder blades would be saved. Instead the starboard set screw held and the welds securing the frame armature inside the rudder to the stock had apparently failed. Meanwhile, the port set screw had failed, yet the frame somehow bent anyway.
Thinking we might still be able to steer the boat with its engines if we had both of them running, we next spent some time examining the port engine to see if we could get it started. This emitted a burning odor whenever we lit up the ignition, and we soon figured out that the starter had shorted out.
Unwilling to admit defeat, we thought we might have better luck sailing the boat now that we understood exactly what was wrong with the rudders. We were also now willing to raise the mainsail again in the much calmer conditions. So up went the main, and we tried every possible combination we could think of, playing the sails against each other and the bent rudder, playing the engine against the rudder in both forward and reverse, but no matter what we tried the essential dynamic remained the same: with no sails up the starboard engine ruled, and the boat just turned to port; with sails up and drawing, in whatever configuration, the bent rudder ruled and the boat would only turn to starboard.
We were now about 300 miles from anywhere, equidistant from Bermuda, the Chesapeake, and New York, and reluctantly concluded that we weren’t going to be able to get the boat to shore without outside assistance. We discussed the prospect of organizing a tow at some length and called Alpha Yachts by sat-phone to see if they could arrange something. Hank, an eternal optimist, thought this was a real possibility, but I was more skeptical. Thinking out how it might proceed, we realized that, even if we could get an appropriate vessel to come to us, it would take days before we could rendezvous. The tow would then have to proceed quite slowly, at say 3 knots at most, due to the bent rudder. Meanwhile, there would be a continuing barrage of routine winter gales, and during each of these–we figured one or two at least–the tow would have to be dropped and the boats would have to lie a-hull separately, waiting for the wind and seas to subside again before proceeding onward.
Finally, after listening to us bat this around for a while, Gunther reluctantly decided the only really viable option was to abandon the boat. He placed a sat-phone call to the Coast Guard in the late afternoon, and the evacuation wheels started grinding.
We assumed, of course, that we would be taken off by an AMVER vessel, as normally happens during evacuations far from shore. Hank had the audacity to suggest that we request a westbound vessel, so that we would arrive somewhere in the U.S. rather than in Europe, and the Coast Guard, to my surprise, readily assented to this, telling us that we could have a westbound ship pick us up at 0800 hours the following morning. They also gave us a weather forecast: the wind that night would increase to 25 knots, hold at that strength through daylight hours on Tuesday, then increase to 35 knots with gusts to over 40 during Tuesday night.
Having made our arrangements, we treated ourselves to a little pre-abandonment party shortly after sunset, broke our dry-ship rule, and opened up some fine red wine. The mood was subdued, but upbeat. Gunther and Doris, in spite of the bitter disappointment of having to give up this boat they’d been looking forward to taking possession of for two years, were very philosophical about their situation, were very grateful no lives were at stake, and together we all laughed about the problems we’d confronted during our passage.
Also, at one point in the evening, a ship came to us from the west and announced via VHF radio that they were ready to bring us aboard and take us to Israel. We politely declined, insisting we had a ride west in the morning, and they went on their way. Later it occurred to us that the Coast Guard, who had seemed more worried about Tuesday’s weather than we were, had sent this ship to us hoping to get us out of there sooner rather than later. We had arranged to maintain a sat-phone call schedule with them, but initially asked for a longer interval than they wanted–eight hours instead of four–to save our phone’s battery. It may be that if we had been in contact more regularly they might have insisted, or have strongly urged, that we join the ship bound for Israel.
In any event, during our scheduled call at 0200 hours they informed us they would be taking us off by helicopter at 0900 hrs. An MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter from North Carolina would rendezvous with a U.S. Navy warship en route to us to refuel, and then again on the way back. We would be allowed to bring with us one small bag each.
Promptly at 0900 hours the next morning we spotted a USCG C-130 search plane heading straight toward us at low altitude, followed five minutes later by the helicopter. I can’t speak to how Gunther and Doris were feeling at this point, but Hank and I were both looking forward to finding out how this would go. Hank has thrashed his way through an awful lot of trouble on the water–two dismastings and five different loss-of-steering incidents–but had always managed to get his boats home and had never before abandoned one. As for me, I had once before abandoned a boat, but in much more sanguine circumstances, in a river in Spain to a nearby dock.
You’ll have seen the video the Coasties have posted. If not, you can watch it here:
Video url: http://youtu.be/VzKULsNnv10
Hank asked me to be the guinea pig and go first, so Gunther and Doris could see what would be happening to them. This turned out to be fortunate for me, as I got to go up in the basket, all dignified and comfortable. After that first hoist, the helo crew decided to speed things up by bringing the others up in a sling, which to me looked decidedly inferior. Hank, as skipper, originally planned to go up last, but Gunther in the end insisted that he should go last instead. That cooler you see him carrying up in the video is not filled with beer, as some have suggested, but with personal possessions. I was very surprised the Coasties let him bring it along.
Doris comes aboard.
Be Good Too as viewed from the chopper.
Gunther, on left, with rescue swimmer John Knight.
Really the worst part of the experience was having to sit through the three-hour long helo ride to shore in soaking wet clothes. This was broken by the fuel stop aboard the U.S. Navy missile destroyer Ross, during which someone threw a garbage bag full of beef-and-onion hoagies into the back of the chopper for us to eat. They looked disgusting, but in fact were very tasty.
Navy personnel.
Authentic Navy chow.
On arrival at the airbase in Elizabeth City we were greeted by a swarm of people, including two Red Cross workers, who were eager to take care of us. From their perspective we must have seemed like disappointing survivors, as we were perfectly healthy, entirely untraumatized, and in generally good spirits. All we really wanted was a hot shower and some dry clothes.
Disembarking in Elizabeth City. Rescue swimmer John Knight, on left, hoist operator Brian Light, center, Gunther.
Gunther after his shower.
Like Gunther, I can honestly say it was the best shower of my life. He really is an amazing guy. Shortly after he finished his shower he got a call from someone at home in Bloomington, Indiana, telling him the water pipes in his house had frozen and burst. And both he and Doris were just as chilled out about that as they were about losing the boat.
SPECIAL THANKS: Words cannot express how grateful we are to our helicopter flight crew. At a minimum, we can recognize them individually:
Lt. David Birky, pilot
Lt. John Poley, pilot
AST2 John Knight, aviation survival technician 2nd class, rescue swimmer
AMT2 Brian Light, aviation maintenance technician 2nd class, hoist operator
Thanks, guys! You were great!
WHAT I LEARNED & QUESTIONED FROM THIS INCIDENT:
1. WINTER VOYAGE TO WEATHER AGAINST GULF STREAM CURRENT?
2. NEW NULL NO. 1 BUILT VESSEL; NO QUALIFIED BUILDING REPRESENTATIVE, YARDS EXPERIENCE, POOR MARINE SURVEY, INADEQUATE SEA TRIALS, NO SHAKEDOWNS AND NO VOYAGE PREPARATIONS - LEAVING THE DOCK WITH NO BATTERY CHARGING?
3. INSURANCE APPROVED VOYAGE? CREWING APPROVED?
4. CREW EXPERIENCE AND QUALIFICATIONS - TRACK RECORDS SHOULD OF RAISED A CAUTION FLAG?
5. ROUTING DISTANCE OFFSHORE WAS AN EXTREMELY POOR DECISION - LACK OF EXPERIENCE? IF WEATHER ROUTER MADE THIS SUGGESTION THE CAPTAIN SHOULD OF SAID "NO".
6. NO EMERGENCY TILLER (ALTERNATIVE STEERING) EQUIPMENT?
7. IF THE CREW CANNOT RECOUNT THE VOYAGE DETAILS ACCURATELY THEN YOU BEGIN TO SEE THE COMEDY OF ERRORS WHICH PLAGUED THIS VOYAGE...
DO YOU REALLY NEED MORE COMMENTS TO SEE THIS VOYAGE WAS AN EXTREMELY POOR DECISION WITH POOR PREPARATIONS.
See: http://northwestpassage2014.blogspot.com/2014/01/uscg-marine-safety-alert-01-14-offshore.html
- - - SNIP - - -
http://www.morganscloud.com/2014/01/18/two-yacht-losses-many-lessons-learned/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AttainableAdventureCruising+%28Attainable+Adventure+Cruising%29
Two Yacht Losses, Many Lessons Learned
“Easy Go” in happier days.
Earlier in the winter, I was saddened to learn of the loss of the junk rigged schooner Easy Go and today I was shocked to learn of the abandonment of the 42-foot catamaran Be Good Too; luckily there was no loss of life in either case. I think there is a lot we can all learn from both these cases and that’s what this post is about.
But first I need to say that this is a difficult post to write. Drawing lessons from the actions of people who have been through a harrowing experience at sea from the comfort of a warm condo in the Canadian Rockies has the potential to be the worst kind of sanctimonious second guessing.
I will try to avoid that and concentrate on what we can all learn from these two abandonments, but inevitably the very process of highlighting lessons learned carries with it some implied criticism. I can’t help that, but do know that I am only too aware of the mistakes that I have made in my offshore sailing career and that the fact that I have never lost a boat or had to call for assistance was on several occasions more the result of good luck than good judgement.
One other thing. I have based this post on two short accounts of what happened, posted by two of the participants. This is by no means a well researched technical analysis. I could easily be wrong about the details or the inference I have drawn from these accounts. However, I have also cranked in my own considerable experience in the area as well as my reading of the accounts of scores of other losses in the same area over some 40 years. What I’m trying to convey here is that I may have one or two details wrong about these particular casualties, but don’t let that influence you into missing the overall message.
Ok, enough covering my ass, on to my thoughts on the lessons learned.
Winter North Atlantic
You have all heard my rants about the hubris induced by the assumption that a good weather router can keep us out of trouble no matter the ocean or the season, so I won’t burden you with that yet again.
So let’s look at timing. Easy go left Nova Scotia on or about November 1st and Be Good Too left New York on January 8th. By early November winter weather patterns have set in in Nova Scotia and the same goes double for the latitude of New York in January.
I don’t care how strong a boat is, or how strong the crew, the bottom line is that the North Atlantic in winter, at least north of Cape Hatteras, is simply a dangerous place for a yacht and most should not be out there.
That’s a pretty sweeping statement I know. But I’m not alone in that opinion. Don Street feels the same way. I would urge you to read Don’s article in full. Applying Don’s wisdom and my own experience I would say that Easy Go, rather than leaving direct from Nova Scotia, would have been better off to coast-hop south to at least Newport and better still Norfolk, Virginia, before striking out for the West Indies.
This would have given her a potentially better sailing angle with the prevailing southwest winds and increased her chances of getting clear of the Gulf Stream before being hit by bad weather.
This is particularly true for a small and relatively slow boat like Easy Go. What might be OK for our own 56-foot cutter, or a boat like her, capable of easily reeling off 170-mile days in most weather is perhaps not advisable in a junk rigged dory barely capable of 100-miles a day, and far less than that when the wind comes forward and the sea gets up.
By January, the winter weather has moved further south and so the same theory applies to Be Good Too: In my opinion, she would have been far better off to coast hop south and leave from Beaufort, North Carolina, south of Hatteras.
Beware The Gulf Stream
I have said this over and over again, but when crews as experienced as those on these two boats make the same mistake over and over again–in both cases, as far as I can see, much of the damage that lead to abandonment occurred in the Gulf Stream–I will repeat myself.
Do not even think about entering the Gulf Stream in heavy weather. Heave-to outside the Stream. Sail at right angles to your desired course. Turn around and go back. Have Scotty beam you up. I don’t care what you do, but don’t enter the Stream unless you are sure that you can clear the Stream and any associated eddies, before the weather gets nasty…got it?
And don’t assume that just because the strong wind is forecast to blow in the same direction as the core current is running that you will be OK. The Stream is not a nice well behaved river that all runs in the same direction. There are frequently areas on either side of the Stream where the current can be running in the opposite direction to the core.
Get in an area with as little as 1.5 knots running against winds in excess of 30 knots that have been blowing for any length of time and you will encounter dangerous breaking waves that can damage even the most well found boat. These are not freak waves, or rogue waves, or anything else strange or unusual. They are simply the result of wind against current and they will always be in these areas when these conditions occur, so if you don’t want to try conclusions (battle it out) with these waves, don’t be in those areas.
By the way, I’m not saying that it is easy to avoid such areas and that anyone who gets caught in one was stupid, particularly since I have been caught a few times myself, albeit before the level of on-board weather and current reporting that we have now was available.
The Gulf Stream can be, particularly when in cahoots with fall weather, a cunning foe that sets traps that the unwary can easily enter with no easy way out, one or even two days before the trap snaps shut. And worse still, many, perhaps most, weather routers don’t have the necessary understanding of realistic boat performance to recognize those traps in time to avoid them.
Shake Down First
OK, this one is aimed squarely at Be Good Too. This boat was brand new and, to make matters worse, was hull number one of the design. She was so new that she was first test sailed on November 26th!
And then the delivery skipper took this boat into the North Atlantic in January, untried by an easier ocean passage. I know, that’s what delivery skippers have to do to make a living. And plenty of them do it over and over again without mishap–one of the reasons I admire many members of that profession. And I’m sure that the very experienced skipper in this case was getting all kinds of pressure to get cracking.
But the bottom line is that in this case it didn’t end well. As you can read in the account, when it got nasty, a series of cascading failures and weaknesses, most of which could probably have been found and fixed over a proper shakedown period, led to abandonment. I hope both delivery skippers and others will learn from this.
Single-Handing Is Tough
Let’s turn our attention to Easy Go. Bob, her owner, has a lot of experience, including a lot single-handed. And I’m no rabid critic of single-handing, having done quite a bit myself. But there are, in my opinion, places and times where single handing is OK, and places and times where being by yourself may not be a good idea. My suggestion is that late fall passages south from Nova Scotia are the latter.
The Root Causes
I could probably go on dissecting and second guessing these two losses for pages. However, in my opinion, most, maybe all, of the other contributing problems were rooted in the factors I have already covered, so I will stop here.
This is Not About The Abandonment Decision
One other thing, you will note that I have not tackled the thorny issue of whether or not the crews should have abandoned these boats that were still floating and relatively watertight. That’s because I have been offshore in really nasty conditions often enough to know that unless you were actually there in a given set of circumstances you really have no idea what it was like. These crews made the right abandon decision for themselves.
Having said that, the abandonment of Be Good Too does highlight the importance of having a viable steering alternative aboard in case of rudder damage.
16 comments…
- January 18, 2014, 4:14 pmExcellent analysis John. Aboard submarines we still critique navigation and ship-handling errors from many years ago, because doing so makes you a better ship driver. Applying the same systematic review of events aboard any vessel and taking the time to say”Where’s my next accident at?” will help everyone be that little bit safer when casting off the lines.
- January 18, 2014, 4:18 pmJohn,
The loss of “Be Good Too” is reminiscent of the loss of a catamaran here on the west coast several years ago. Sadly that one ended with loss of all aboard. The boat was enroute to Seattle for the January boat show. The Northern California and Pacific Northwest coastline is no place to be in the winter, particularly with a storm forecast. However the delivery captain “had a schedule to keep” and pressed on. One of my dock neighbors, a circumnavigator with over 130,000 sea miles and knowledge of our coast strongly advised the captain to stay put. The boat was found on an Oregon beach after the storm.Commercial pressures can cloud judgement.- January 18, 2014, 5:54 pmHi Dave,
I remember that boat washing ashore near Tillamook Oregon. A year or two later a French delivery skipper tried to deliver one of those Lagoons with the helm station about 20 feet in the air singlehanded from France to the winter Seattle boat show. Fortunately for him he got so far behind schedule that he was able to leave the boat in California and finally finish the delivery in the spring.Hard way to make a living.- January 18, 2014, 6:07 pmRichard,Before my divorce in 2007 I used to own a beach condo in Oregon about 30 miles south of Tillamook. Being out there during a winter storm was awe inspiring. The storm that claimed that cat was forecast well in advance and it was a pretty significant weather event. I would not have wanted to be driving up the highway in those conditions much less being at sea in anything less stable than an aircraft carrier
.
- January 18, 2014, 6:07 pm
- January 18, 2014, 5:54 pm
- January 18, 2014, 4:58 pmJohn, I agree 100% about staying away from the Gulf Stream in seasons when there could be rough and dangerous weather. In July on 1974, Kitty and I were sailing our 30 foot Allied Seawind Ketch, “Bebinka” back from the Caribbean to New York. We had been delayed due to medical reasons; but, left for NY thinking no problem, even though another sailor said not to go between Hatteras and Bermuda, instead go either to Bermuda or come in at Beaufort, NC. On July 14th 1974 (I will never forget the date) we got caught in hurricane force winds (70+kts) and huge seas. At first we hove-to then went to lying a-hull under bare poles. The motion was deceptively calm until in the middle of the night, we fell off a huge wave. I am not sure if we actually did a 360; but, Kitty and I were both lying on the overhead in what seemed like an eternity but was probably only a couple of seconds. As we hit the trough, the main hatch blew off and when we righted the water was up to the level of the bunks. (We were however, lucky enough to have the most efficient bilge pump in the world, a frightened woman with a bucket.) The grab rails on the deck were blown off as was our windvane self-steering and our spray dodger. Also the main boom was bent and the sail below the reef points was torn. Back in those days we did not have access to good weather forecasts. nor did we have a parachute or sea anchor on board. We had no radios capable of calling for help. By the next day the wind had moderated and we were able to limp slowly all the way up to New York Harbor. I WILL NEVER COME UP FROM OR GO DOWN TO THE CARIBBEAN DURING THE HURRICANE SEASON AGAIN.
- January 18, 2014, 9:20 pmHi Scott,Well that’s clear!Just so others know that Scott is no shrinking violet, he has circumnavigated twice and sailed to and from Bermuda in the one-two, several times, and probably a lot more besides that I don’t know about.
- January 18, 2014, 9:20 pm
- January 18, 2014, 5:30 pmI’d be remiss to second guess the decision process of highly experienced delivery skippers like Hank and Charlie whom I respect . However I leaned some time ago that I don’t have the right mentality to be a delivery skipper—Time is money–throw your sea bag on board, fill up the diesel tanks, flip the switches to see what works and what doesn’t, and hit the road.However as a yacht builder there are several things about this episode that immediately come to mind.
1- Lack of an emergency steering system. With the near vertical transom shape of the it Alpha 42 cat it would be relatively easy to have a bolt- on bracket and complete spare rudder system available. Should be standard equipment on any boat bound for an offshore passage. (Another good argument for an externally hung rudder for the A-40)
2- Lack of a sea anchor. If the boat had a proper sea anchor and bridle, which catamaran experts including the designer view as the best storm survival tactic, they would have been much more secure and able to ride out heavier weather rather than wandering around with no directional control.
3- Window size: Catamaran designers cater to their clients desire for floating condos and thus invariably want to incorporate picture windows. If you look at the panel sizes of the windows on the Alpha 42 they are huge. No matter how thick the polycarbonate, they invariably flex under full wave impact and thus break their seals. I was guilty of wanting a glass palace when I designed the Lightspeed 58 fifteen years ago, but at least I kept the panel sizes reasonable. Also I went to the expense of making a mold for every window and having them blown by a manufacturer of kit aircraft canopies. The 2 axis curvature results in a much greater panel stiffness. Catamaran designers seem to think that waves never can hit their cabin structures because they are so high off the water. I remember having a Dark & Stormy in the Dingy Club bar in Bermuda and listening to a delivery skipper telling a story about a common production catamaran he was delivering being hit by a wave just like the one that hit the Alpa 42. At first they couldn’t understand why halyard tails were sticking into the salon along with all the water—-.
4- Daggerboards: Having the ability to retract the underwater appendages substantially increases the ability of the boat to slide off from wave impact rather than trip over the keels. As an added bonus, a daggerboard is an ideal basis for a jury rigged emergency rudder. Think a pre-designed gudgeon bracket and a set of pittles that clamp over the daggerboard at an appropriate location, and and an emergency tiller attached the same way.
5- Length: For a catamaran that is going to weigh at least 22,000# fully laden, 42′ hulls are on the short side. Better to pay more for dockage and stretch the hull length to 47′ while keeping everything else the same.- January 18, 2014, 9:16 pmHi Richard,All really good and interesting points that we can all learn from, thanks.
- January 18, 2014, 9:16 pm
- January 18, 2014, 5:45 pmAs a footnote, while one month is certainly too short a time frame for testing and development of a new vessel before undertaking a difficult offshore passage, as it turns out the designer and builder did subject it to a heavy weather extended sea trial before turning it over to the purchaser. I have no doubt that there are many boats that have circumnavigated while experiencing less heavy going than the Alpha 42 did during its sea trials.“Extreme winter testing of the Alpha 42 continues as the boat has completed half of its circumnavigation of Long Island. The crew of 3 consisting of Gregor Tarjan, his partner Marc Anassis and Kenny have faced arctic gales in the North Atlantic with winds up to 35 knots and walls of 8′ seas. The boat has proven to be extremely strong and stiff. In spite of the rough conditions, the very high bridgedeck clearance of the boat assured that not one single time did a wave pound the main deck. Conditions are harsh and the crew only ventures outside the heated interior if absolutely necessary. The Alpha’s decks have been covered with ice and walking on them has become extremely hazardous. The Alpha 42 might be the only cruising catamaran which has been tested under such harsh conditions.”http://www.aeroyacht.com/2014/01/02/alpha-01-attacks-the-ice/
- Hi Richard,Yes, I read that on the boat builder’s website. And we do need to give them credit for the testing they did. More than most, I would think. Having said that, I’m going by results, and the litany of failures detailed in Charlie’s post is pretty disturbing. Bottom line, if you have that many failures you didn’t sea trial enough.Also, this was boat number one. Is a single circumnavigation of Long Island adequate for the first boat? Not to me. We are planning a lot more than that for the Adventure 40 prototype–probably take six months to a year and I would guess that by the time we are done the boat will have at least 10,000 miles on it. In fact this testing program is one of the biggest factors that will make the A40 different.
- January 18, 2014, 7:17 pmIt seems that at least one boat is lost every year on a fall trip from eastern Canada or the US to the Caribbean. It is a difficult and potentially dangerous passage. I have friends and acquaintances who have done it safely many times, but another who abandoned his boat and endured a harrowing “rescue” by a Russian container ship.In 1999 we set out from Nova Scotia for a winter in paradise aboard our just launched, backyard built, wooden boat with minimal equipment or experience. However, I did have enough sense to heed Don Street’s advice and take a pleasant coastal cruise to Beaufort North Carolina. We headed out to sea on a fair breeze the morning after passage of a cold front in the first week of November and arrived safely in St John USVI nine days later.We met two other couples while biding our time and waiting for weather in Beaufort. One was American, the other Swiss, both with strong well found boats and all of the possible gear including SSB radios. Both boats left the same day that we did. About a month later we ran into the Americans in the Cruz Bay grocery store and heard the story.Both of them were taking routing advice from Herb Hilgenberg. A couple of days into the voyage, Herb started issuing warnings about a depression in the western Caribbean that ultimately turned into Hurricane Lenny, a late season west to east storm. The storm track was very uncertain but he thought it looked potentially bad, which indeed it turned out to be. He thought it would track north across Puerto Rico and into the path of the southbound yachts including us and our American and Swiss friends.The Americans, after talking to Herb, peeled off to Bermuda and ended up being pinned down by weather for several weeks before finally getting a “weather window” (I think that was the first time I ever heard that phrase) and making a successful voyage to their intended destination in the USVI.The Swiss kept on heading south but started having boat troubles. After nine or ten days, they were becalmed a couple of hundred miles north of Puerto Rico (I remember that heavy, ominous weather in the days leading up to the storm) with a dead engine and dying batteries due to failure of a fuel lift pump and in grave fear that Lennie was lined up for a direct hit. After what I was told were dramatic radio exchanges with Herb, they abandoned their boat and were taken aboard a container ship bound for the States. From what I gathered in subsequent conversations with people who heard the radio traffic, their abandonment was more due to the mental state of the crew than the physical state of the boat.We, of course, plowed along in ignorance without radio or forecast, and arrived at the intended destination only to find everyone busy preparing for a hurricane. Instead of passing over Puerto Rico, it went due west and parked over Saint Martin, doing great damage and sinking many boats in the lagoon. We rode it out safely in Hurricane Hole, Saint John. The Swiss boat was towed into San Juan but not before it had been found by someone else and stripped of most valuable gear.My point in this , if I have one, is to agree with John and say that I would also avoid the Gulf Stream late in the season when there are better, if not faster, alternatives for a voyage south. However, a fall trip to the Caribbean is dangerous regardless of route. If Hurricane Lenny had gone north like Herb thought it would, I might not be here to tell this story.
- January 18, 2014, 8:52 pmI think this was a good analysis, and John, you said some things that are hard to say. One more good reason about going south to Beaufort before leaving is that the Gulf Stream is usually closer in, giving you a better chance to get clear of it in any weather window. Another comment is that if there is a low/frontal system moving across the US, it usually means a storm in the Atlantic when it heads offshore. Weather forecasts may not always emphasize this. The warmth of the Gulf Stream can intensify these systems.
Regarding the comments about the sea trials of the catamaran, I wonder what the wave conditions were in the sea trials? I would guess much less severe than were encountered in the Gulf Stream. - January 19, 2014, 10:53 amGood review of the two sailing incidences.The Atlantic is not the place to be in January, off the East coast. As the radio officer on a very large semi-submersible oil rig being towed from the Grand Banks to the Gulf of Mexico in Winter. I radioed Bermuda radio to report position once abeam. 36 hours later I radioed again abeam! We were in a gale force 9+ going backwards with two ocean tugs struggling to keep us going south. Not the place for any yacht.In the early 80′s in Jan, there was a particularly nasty low between NY and Bermuda, seven yachts got into serious trouble , a commercial vessel apparently went down and several of the yachts were abandoned. I was delivering a C&C 48 to the Islands and got caught in that storm. The rudder was damaged but we limped into St. Georges and changed out the rudder.I was a delivery skipper at the time and it was a mistake to allow business pressure to influence my decision to go in Jan, but I did and although we made it, I learned a big lesson about not risking lives for business.
- January 19, 2014, 12:42 pmJohn, we just read your piece and thought it was spot-on. It is difficult to write about the misfortune of others, however, that is one very effective way to learn. In the Navy Diving & Salvage business we always drafted after-action reports so we could benefit from lessons-learned. As the skipper of a Rescue & Salvage ship I learned a lot from both reading and writing these reports. After retirement, as the ombudsperson for a marine insurance group I analyzed similar incidents, and getting the technical side of these casualties correct is certainly easier than describing the human side, yet the human side is often the driving factor. You did a great job of addressing the important human physiological and psychological issues in your after-action report. I have worked with the US Coast Guard and the US Navy on similar issues; see Disaster On The Way to Paradise (http://www.sailblogs.com/member/tigerlilly/?xjMsgID=191681). We know SV Easy Go; Bob is a good sailor and experienced seaman, but fatigue is our greatest enemy at sea. The lesson for me is to stay dry, warm, and rested – but there is no way for an Old Guy to do that single-handed in the North Atlantic in the winter. You just cannot get there safely… Your observations regarding the lack of due diligence and testing of that new (and very expensive) catamaran were the core issues in that casualty. Thankfully the owners had the foresight to employ an experienced delivery skipper and crew, or that story would likely have ended in tragedy. Lilly enjoys reading about the Adventure 40, and is learning a lot; so am I. The experience is somewhat akin to teaching your wife to drive – best left to someone else… Your cruising boat design discussions with the other curmudgeons should be required reading for boat wives – who usually have good solid common sense, but often just need some straight-forward technical explanations. If more boat wives read about the Adventure 40, fewer inappropriate cruising boats would be bought, and the general quality of the cruising lifestyle would certainly be improved. I have not met a cruising woman yet who did not have safety at the top of her objectives list. Your work has encouraged some really in-depth conversations aboard Tiger Lilly regarding why and how we do things. You have helped Lilly be pro-active regarding her environment afloat – and that is a good thing. We are currently prepping the boat for the South Pacific, and much of your writing is germane to that process. Keep up the good work. Tom & Lilly S/V Tiger Lilly, Spanish Waters, Curacao, N.A.
- January 19, 2014, 1:16 pmDoes it seem like there are more abandonments recently? Or am I just hearing about them more, and paying attention. Thanks John for the post.
- January 19, 2014, 1:20 pmThanks for citing the Don Street “Sailing South” article in your post. I have saved this article to guide my own route planning. Compared to most of the sailors who post on this site, I am a “babe in the woods”, so I need to draw upon the knowledge and experience of master seamen like Street, who probably has the most local knowledge of the Carribean than any other published person alive.As Street writes, “In September 1964, Yachting published “Going South,” the first of probably 300 articles that I’ve written. I recommended going to Bermuda in September, when the weather is relatively stable, leaving the boat there, then flying back to Bermuda in December to continue the trip south from there. For November departures, I recommended setting sail from Morehead City. From there, I said to head east-southeast until the butter melts and the trades fill in, typically between 66 degrees and 65 degrees west, then head south. That article is still correct today, and if sailors had followed that advice, it would’ve saved untold lives and saved the underwriters a lot of money.” His more recent article provides more route options than this. Seems like sound advice to me, especially for the less experienced, shorthanded crews, and/or a not fully tested boat.I’m going to see if I can find the 1964 article to add to my reference library.Raises a question in my mind: What are the recommended timing and routes for going North?
- January 18, 2014, 7:17 pm
